Ppaca

Let's focus on revising and improving the current system rather than digging in our heels against it. Fixing a broken healthcare system offers an opportunity for some easy-but-substantial cost savings in healthcare policy that would save taxpayers billions annually. Here are a few simple fixes.

Healthcare tech is the defibrillator that is hopefully going to shock the life into an industry in need of a radical transformation. So remember, at some point in the near future, when your physiological data is transmitted to your doctor via the shirt on your back, you'll have Obamacare to thank.

It's been five years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, also called Obamacare) was signed into law. Implementation has occurred in stages over the last few years, but many business owners still have questions about how the law will continue to affect them.

The adverse financial impact from HITECH on some providers is minor compared to the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This has been especially true for smaller community hospitals. The reason for this is simple.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. is this week's Most Impressive Democrat of the Week award-winner, for doing a much better job arguing the case for President Obama's interpretation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court than he did the last time around.

Republicans in Congress have been saying for five years now that their top priority is to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. The problem, however, is that they are now scrambling to come up with something (anything!) that would help convince John Roberts to vote against the ACA.

We are in the midst of a political battle over the Obamacare numbers right now, so it seemed like a good time to examine what they all mean, in an attempt to interject some clarity into a very confusing debate.

The Obama administration just rolled out what could be called "version 1.1" of HealthCare.gov. After two months of nothing short of disaster, the White House is now confident that the website is ready for prime time. Mostly.

After spending some time trying to shop for insurance for my parents, and facing the same issues everyone has been having, I decided to put on my developer hat and try to figure out how this web application works.

The federal government was not up for the task of building and overseeing a complicated e-commerce business with a significant data management back-end -- any more than it has ever been up for building the military's fighter jets, running commercial airports, or administering the actual Medicare program.

Love him or hate him, call him "patriot" or "traitor" -- it is now absolutely impossible to argue that Edward Snowden's leaks weren't effective, meaningful, and will actually cause the federal government to have a national conversation with its citizens about what it feels it is legally able to do.

Right now, in every state across America, teams of people are building websites that will change the health care landscape in this country. These "Health Insurance Exchanges" will offer Americans government-run health insurance plans.

If the legislature decides to do nothing this session, we will lose $5 Billion in federal funding this year that could have gone to the state, create jobs and help hospitals pay for the care of the uninsured.

Some offers are easy to reject using just common sense. I had assumed that the decision regarding taking billions of federal funds for Medicaid Expansion was in that same category, but for many legislators, the choice is not so straight-forward.

Out of the 50 states, Florida ranks 48th in the number of people that have health insurance. That means only two states have fewer people insured, with Texas being the worst. More than one in every five Floridians have no way but self-pay or no pay when they need medical attention.

Consumers need protections only when they are turned into consumers. And that is what Congressman Paul Ryan's budget seeks to do for -- or do to, depending on your feelings about medical capitalism -- future Medicare beneficiaries.

As the health reform law moves off the drawing board into the real world, its opponents are doing their best to make it not work -- by shifting their energies from fulminations about the boogeymen they imagine in the law to hampering, complicating or outright obstructing its implementation.

As the changes called for in this law are rolled out, it is important to know how this reform will affect you and your family. Test your familiarity with this historic piece of legislation by taking this short quiz.